My faithful dash-cam captures another unsuspecting classic, this time being worked on the Jewish New Year, of all holidays!

Sunday evening was New Year’s eve in Israel, followed by two holidays free from work. As we went out for a branch with my wife’s family, I suddenly saw this at one of the traffic lights:

Notice it’s carrying stuff on its back. Not only is it impressive to work an at least fifty years old truck, but doing it on a holiday? My oh my… I’m kidding, of course. Tel Aviv is a secular city and it’s most common to witness people (and cars) working through holidays and Sabbaths. The fifty years old classic JEEP is much more impressive.

I thought I remembered this one from a few classic meetings in the past:

But at closer inspection, some details are different, such as the wheels, the canopy, roof color, etc. No matter, this is a chance for me to upload some Overlands I photographed at various classic meetings:

As a very general rule, full floating hubs are a stronger design and they have some distinct advantages. The fact that you can add freewheeling hubs is one. that makes for less wear and tear while flat towing. In fact some transfer cases (the Dana 300 on 80’s era AMC Jeeps for one) have an oiling issue that causes the bearings to run dry if the driveline is turning while not under power. Free wheeling rear hubs solve that.

Full floating axles mean that the shaft itself only transfers power to the hub…the bearings bear the weight. If you snap your rear axle with a semi floating setup, your hub/wheel/tire and outer axle shaft fragment will work out of the housing, so you won’t get far. With floaters, you would unlock that axle and limp home. If it was the rear, you could freewheel the broken rear end, shift to 4-high and drive on the front end.

Great finds! These Willys pickups/wagons just never lose their charm. Great design and styling all around. Never knew they had a following in Israel but their longevity is no suprise. I would imagine rust is a non-issue over there?

That first blue one is interesting…looks like a conversion from a wagon, but in some markets I think there were some ‘utes’ that were basically a factory version of the wagon with an open rear section.

Well yes, you could say Israel is short on rain, but the problem is very high humidity (mostly along the coastline)- no less than 60-70% in the summer. So it isn’t cut and dry (excuse the pun) as you’d think.

Further towards the desert- yes. Cars are more preserved than others.

As for the “converted” blue JEEP, I don’t know, but it appears you’re right.

Nice catch. Unless I’m wrong, this particular vehicle has Toyota Landcruiser drivetrain – the same chap has a double cab he constructed himself, also using Toyota bits. However, the reason these are popular in Israel is because they were assembled there by Kaiser-Ilyn in Haifa (who also assembled Studebaker Larks, Champs and trucks when Kaiser-Fraser stopped car production), including some unique models not seen elsewhere. See here (in Hebrew – use Google translate): http://israelmotorindustry.org/willys-jeep-israel-made/
and here for one of the Toyollyses: https://www.flickr.com/photos/60047396@N04/22920301120/

The enclosed version of these, while called a wagon in their time, have a very strong claim on being the first SUV. I personally haven’t seen many of the pickups, but they’re very appealing just the same!